There’s a few for me. Yamok sauce. Various synthohols. The desserts Troi’s always eating (or being). But most especially gagh. I wouldn’t let the fact it’s some kind of living worm distract me from the way all the cool people describe it. If Riker likes it, I think I would too and I certainly wouldn’t want to look like a p’taQ in front of Riker.
It makes you wonder … once we get it to the point of synthesizing food and food tastes and content … will replicators over time develop a certain taste or flavour that people will grow accustomed to depending on a previous version or change or setup.
It makes me think of this scene from the Matrix
https://youtu.be/zuUtAPUZP0Q
I think people will experiment like crazy. Think about Miles and his scotch flavored gum. Now imagine that with any flavor. Someone like Deanna could make literally all of her food taste like chocolate if she prefers. The replicator could just add the right macro nutrients and vitamins and she’d be good to go.
There’s some Japanese inventor/scientist that made a “taste-o-vision” thingy. It basically has synthetic flavors on some kind of medium that you lick. But not like “I put blue raspberry in mine;” it has “pixels” for lack of a better word that you can adjust electronically for the flavor you want to experience. IDK how it works exactly, but the concept sounds pretty rad. I’d want it for when watching cooking shows; get to taste what they make 🤤
I’ve also seen ads recently for a vape replacement that’s just a tube with a piece of cotton wicked in some kind of flavor liquid, so you can inhale flavored air. That one seems weird to me, but also maybe I’ll get one? 🤷🏻♂️
Or even specific types of replicators themselves producing food with a specific “flavor” bias?
In DS9 - ”Blaze of Glory”, Eddington complained to Sisko that replicated food tasted, to him, like synthesized protein molecules— that, regardless of the dish, it just tasted like synthesized protein to him after having grown and eaten his own farm-fresh food while living on a Maquis colony.
While he was probably exaggerating a little bit, Sisko seemed to agree a bit, too, and is also known for growing and cooking at least some of his own food on occasion, not to mention having grown up in a restaurant run by his father on Earth that serves real food.
As we’ve seen throughout Trek, not all replicators are created equal. Sometimes, even on Starfleet ships and facilities, we see differences in performance and capability. Perhaps those on Galaxy-class starships are more fancy than those in a Starfleet runabout? We know from endless complaints that those on DS9 were pretty mediocre except for the upgraded ones in Quark’s Bar (which also served real food, btw).